INCREASING THE ABILITY OF UNDERSTANDING BIOGRAPHY TEXTS THROUGH MONOPOLY GAME MEDIA

Biography texts constitute an important material in Indonesian language. Studying biography texts also means studying linguistic aspects, in particular sentence structures. The problem of this research is the low abilities of students in understanding linguistic aspects of biography texts. This research aims to increase student abilities in understanding the linguistic aspects of biography texts through a monopoly game. The research procedure utilized in this research was a classroom action research. Research results showed that the abilities of students to understand linguistic aspects of biography texts could increase when conducted through learning with a monopoly game. This increase could be seen in the average of student learning results and the average observation results of student and teacher activities in each cycle. The conclusion is that the low abilities of students to understand linguistic aspects of biography texts can be improved and elevated through learning carried out using a monopoly game.


INTRODUCTION
The Indonesian 2013 curriculum (hereinafter called K-13) is a curriculum based on competence. K-13 was designed by the government with the intent of enabling students to have skills and abilities appropriate to the expected basic competence. More specifically, K-13 demands students to be able to master a task, ability, or skill according to the basic competence being taught. According to Priyatni (2014:19), basic competence is a competence that must be mastered by students in a certain subject in a certain class. In the subject of Indonesian Language (Bahasa Indonesia), there are 10 basic competences that must be mastered by students. One of those competences is understanding biography texts.
This basic competence of understanding biography texts must be mastered by students from a middle school level. This is because biography texts are related to the understanding of sentence structures. With biography texts, students are expected to understand content, sentence structure, and other linguistic aspects well.
Biography texts are an important Indonesian Language material that contains the story of someone or a figure. Biography texts are texts that tell the story of an actor or figure along with the events and problems they face (Kemdikbud, 2013:37). With biography texts, the life history of a person can be retold. Biographies can also tell the story of an important or famous figure.
Biographies also often tell stories of historical figures, but stories of living people are also not uncommon. Biographies tell stories based on factual information and are presented in narrative form.
In learning to understand biography texts, there are aspects that must be studied by students. One of those aspects is understanding the linguistic properties of biography texts. Learning how to understand the linguistic aspects of biography texts involves indicators that must be mastered by students. These indicators are identifying and explaining the linguistic aspects of biography texts. This is in accordance with the learning materials for Indonesian Language found in the 2013 Curriculum, in which students are to be able to understand the linguistic aspects of biography texts both orally and verbally .
The study of biography texts is inescapable from the study of linguistic aspects, and linguistic aspects are important to be taught to students early on so that later the students will have sufficient skills in expressing ideas both orally and verbally. Thus, creative and innovative learning is very much needed to increase these skills. To conduct a creative and innovative learning process, one that can attract the interest of students, teachers are demanded to be active and creative. In this regard, teachers may choose and peruse appropriate learning media. The use of appropriate learning media will aid students to understand the materials being taught.
Media of learning is very important to support a smooth learning process. According to Sudjana and Rivai, (2013:2) the importance of the role of media for learning is because of these reasons: (1) learning will attract greater attention from students, (2) materials are presented fully and clearly to achieve the learning objectives maximally, (3) students no longer feel bored of classroom lessons because they do not just listen to teacher lectures and teachers do not spend much effort to repeat explanations, and (4) students more conduct independent learning activities by not only listening to teacher lectures but also through other activities, such as observing, completing assignments, demonstrating, and so on.
There various kinds and types of media that can be used in the learning process, but not all kinds of media possess the same utility. An important consideration in the selection of media is the characteristic of students. In general, students enjoy games, even more so those that contain specific rules. As such, selection of media that is oriented to increasing the interests and pleasure of students will accommodate the intent.
In this research, the researcher selected and used the media of a game as a tool to assist the learning process, and the media is a monopoly game. A monopoly game is a game that consists of a game board, pieces, dice, cards, play money, and houses (Utomo, 2010:151). However, the monopoly game in this research is not like the typical game, as it has been modified and contains materials to be learned by students. The basic theory used for the media remains that of the monopoly game. In addition, the monopoly game has its own rules on how to play. The advantage of the use of this monopoly game is to ease students in understanding the linguistic aspects of biography texts, because it is indeed designed to contain the relevant and complete materials, in particular explanations on conjunctions, simple sentences, and compound sentences. Further, the monopoly game can also increase the enthusiasm and passion of students to take part in learning, because students learn in a fun environment. Students are expected to possess the self-motivation to continue learning, and this indirectly instills their will. This is different from lessons that merely makes students sit and listen to teacher lectures.
There are previous researches that are relevant to this research, such as the research carried out by Ajeng Harlika Puspitasari (2014) titled The Effectiveness of the Monopoly Game on Learning Achievements of Social Science Students of Grade VI of Elementary School. This research was an experimental research. The differences of the monopoly game used in that research are found in the content, rules, and images. The content in the monopoly game in that research was adjusted to the materials being taught. The rules in the monopoly game did not limit how many problems a student had to work on when given a chance card, while in this research, the student is only required to solve the problem. The images in the monopoly game in that research was composed of countries in the world, while in this research the images were adjusted to the material being taught. The parts that were the same are both games were composed of a game board, dice, cards, play money, pieces, and rules on how to play the monopoly game.
The same is true of a research conducted by Fitri (2013). The research was a classroom action research (CAR). The difference of that research is on the focus of the conducted research. The research by Fitri (2013) was focused on the abilities of students to identify story elements, while in this research, the focus is on student abilities to understand linguistic aspects of biography texts, in particular to understand conjunctions, simple sentences, and compound sentences.
In regard to content, the difference is on the included materials. In the research by Fitri (2013), the included content is oriented on how to identify story elements, with the rule that students who wish to own a property or set must solve a problem on a problem card without limits of the number of problems to work on, while in this research the problems the problems are limited. The commonality of both researcher is that the monopoly game is used to overcome problems that students experience. Both researches prove that the monopoly game was able to overcome the difficulties and increase learning abilities of students.
In this research, there are several linguistic aspects that are hard to understand by students, in relation to the mastery of conjunctions, simple sentences, and compound sentences (Warsiman, 2012:121). In learning using the monopoly game, the materials are presented completely and in detail. The materials are focused on discussing the essence, characteristics, and example linguistic aspects of biography texts, in particular in relation to the use of conjunctions, simple sentences, and compound sentences. The difficulties of students in determining sentence structures well, in particular simple and compound sentences, are broken down through the monopoly game, and in the end students can learn them easily.
The monopoly game contains examples in detail that can aid students to understand the structure of simple and compound sentences. Lessons using the monopoly game are conducted using lectures as introductions. The lecture method is only used to explain the parts that are still not understood by research. While the lecture method is only used as a general introduction, in 6(2), December 2019 e-ISSN: 2549-8673, p-ISSN : 2302 -884X www.erudio.ub.ac.id the next stage, the lessons are guided by a monopoly game that have been designed with certain modifications according to the character of the learning materials. As such, the monopoly game is truly designed to overcome the problems that students experience, in particularly related to student difficulties in understanding linguistic aspects of biography texts, in particular in relation to the use of conjunctions, simple sentences, and compound sentences.
From this explanation, the problems can be formulated. How can the ability to understand linguistic aspects of biography texts be increased through a monopoly game from a process standpoint? How can the ability to understand linguistic aspects of biography texts be increased through a monopoly game from a results standpoint?
The goals of this research are to describe the increase of student abilities in understanding linguistic aspects of biography texts through a monopoly game in regard to process, and to describe the increase of student abilities in understanding linguistic aspects of biography texts through a monopoly game in regard to result.

Definition of Biographical Text
Biographical texts are texts that tell the life history of a character or person. Nurhadi (2012: 77) stated that biographies are writings about someone, both still alive and someone who has died that contains life stories, life principles, struggles, successes or achievements they have achieved, as well as their persistence in achieving success.
The biographical text contains factual information related to a person's identity. Therefore, the preparation process requires accurate information from the figures being told. Based on this opinion it can be concluded that the biographical text in this study is a text that contains the life history of someone written by someone else with the aim of motivating the reader to emulate and emulate positive actions.

Structure and Content of Biographical Texts
The structure of biogarafi text consists of three components, namely orientation, event or problem, and reorientation (Kemendikbud, 2013: 42). Orientation is the part that presents an initial description of the character being told. It contains the identity of a character, such as name, status, occupation, and residence. Events or problems is a core part of biographical texts because they describe the events experienced by the characters. All events that are considered touching, proud, and impressive are presented in this section, and reorientation is the final part of a biographical text. It contains the writer's hope that the reader is motivated and emulates the positive actions of a character being told.

Linguistic Characteristics of Biographical Texts
Linguistic characteristics of biographical texts in general use sentences that have information from the past. There are several linguistic characteristics that must be considered in biographical texts, namely the choice of conjunctions, reference words, verbs, single sentences, compound sentences, and information. In addition to the structure of the text, linguistic 6(2), December 2019 e-ISSN: 2549-8673, p-ISSN : 2302 -884X www.erudio.ub.ac.id characteristics also determine the success of a biographical text. Incorrect use of linguistic aspects can lead to misunderstanding in understanding text writing. If the written biography is interesting and clear and uses relevant language, then the characters are told to be the center of attention of the reader. Therefore, the ability to understand the language characteristics of biographical texts must be mastered by students.

The Concept of Monopoly Media
Monopoly is a game that is quite popular in Indonesia. Husna (2009: 151) explained that monopoly is a game in the form of board games, pawns, dice, cards, money, and so forth. The monopoly game aims to fill leisure time and entertainment for the players. In addition, this game is a place to compete with each other in mastering the areas contained in the plot. Yoga (Fitri, 2013: 11) stated that the mononopoly game aims to control all plots on the board through the purchase, exchange of property, and rental in a simple economic system. Monopoly game is played by two or more people. All players in the game are opponents. The player who has the most money compared to other players is as the winner.
There are three cards in monopoly media, namely the opportunity card, the general fund card, and the property card, and the three have different functions. The opportunity card is a card that contains questions to students who get it, while the general fund card is a card that contains materials that can be opened by students if they have difficulty in understanding the linguistic aspects of biographical texts. Players must obey all rules.
Monopoly media consists of monopoly boards in the form of boxes. On the monopoly board there are 40 plots or columns. The board is measuring 40x40 cm. The tools used in monopoly media are pawns, dice, money, and houses. All equipment along with the monopoly board is contained in a small box made of cardboard. It is intended that the practical media to be moved or carried.

Steps to a Monopoly Game
The steps of the monopoly game on understanding the linguistic aspects of biographical texts are as follows: a. Game participants consist of 4 children in each group; b. Each group receives a set of monopoly media; c. Each student determines the turn to play by throwing the dice. The highest dice score becomes the first player. Then, sequentially according to the number of cubs; d. Each student chooses pieces that are already available; e. At the start of the game each player is given a financial capital of 5,000. However, new students may make transactions after one round; f. At the information gathering stage, students read each other the "public funds" card in one group in turn. At this stage there is an exchange of information and a discussion process. If there is a student who does not listen to the player reading the card, then the student must pay a fine of 500; g. After circling the monopoly board one round, players are allowed to trade. Transactions are carried out by buying a "public fund" card, which is a card that contains material and can choose a property card. Every player who has bought a "public fund" card is 6(2), December 2019 e-ISSN: 2549-8673, p-ISSN : 2302 -884X www.erudio.ub.ac.id required to read to other participants about the material written on the card. Every other player who stops at a plot that has been purchased is obliged to pay tax of 200; h. In the reasoning stage, students who are in the plots read "opportunity", that is the card that contains the questions, then the player must take the opportunity card and work on the questions written on the card; i. Before getting instructions from the teacher, players are prohibited from opening cards, because all players will work on the questions together; j. The answers to the questions in the opportunity card are written on a sheet of paper that has been provided by each student; k. If the player is in a plot that reads "public funds" then the participant must read, examine, and remember the information; l. Monopoly media is used with an effective duration of 80 minutes (2 hours of study); m. Finally, students must reorganize the media monopoly and submit it to the teacher; n. Students collect answer sheets that have been done; o. The game ends on the appointed time; p. The player who has the most wealth from the results of answering 7 questions and buying a certificate is as the winner.

RESEARCH METHOD
This research is a classroom action research (CAR). The monopoly game is used as a learning media to overcome the difficulties in understanding linguistic aspects of biography texts in regard to process and result.
Data for this research is the abilities of students to understand linguistic aspects of biography texts in regard to process and result. The research was conducted on 35 Grade VIII students of State Middle School 6 of Sidoarjo. Research was conducted from August 10 to September 2 2017.
The procedure for this research covers the activities of planning, action, observation, and reflection (Arikunto, 206:16;Aqib, 2006:23;Huda, 2015:49). The four activities are conducted in a loop or cycle of CAR research procedure, which can be seen in Figure 1. The activities involved in executing the action are detailed below.

Planning
Before conducting CAR, the researcher plans out learning based on basic competences for understanding biography texts through a monopoly game. The planned learning involves (1) composition of a draft for learning execution (RPP) which details the steps of learning activities including introduction, primary activities, and conclusion; (2) preparation of the monopoly game which has been adjusted to the materials; (3) preparation of examination questions and scoring rubric; and (4) preparation of activity instruments, covering observation forms for teacher and student activities, and a survey to obtain response from the students. This planning is done in a collaboration with a partner teacher.

Action
The learning process that applies the monopoly game is then executed according to the plans.
The following are details of the conducted learning process. First, the teacher opens the lesson by greeting and detailing the lesson plans; the teacher explains the materials to be discussed. The materials to be discussed are the linguistic characteristics of biography texts, specifically the use of conjunctions, simple sentences, and compound sentences. Second, the teacher explains how to play the monopoly game so that students understand what must be done. the teacher asks students form groups of four students. Fourth, the teacher distributes the monopoly game to each group. Fifth, students are asked to carefully read the cards to understand the materials. Sixth, students are asked to work on the problems individually if they receive chance cards that contain questions. Seventh, students are asked to turn in their work or answer sheets to the teacher. Eighth and finally, students repack the monopoly game and return the game to teacher.

Observation
The activity of observation was conducted while the learning process took place. Observation was conducted to directly see student and teacher activities through the provided observation sheets.
If the obtained data have not yet shown the indicators established during planning, observation was conducted in the next cycle. As such, the activity needs to be done until the results are as expected. The indication of success is known by an improvement in the learning results of students. During observation, the researcher collaborates with the partner teacher to see the learning process.

Reflection
The activity of reflection is done to provide a response to the limitations that occurred while the learning process took place. This finding will become the basis for improvements in the next cycle.

Results of Learning in Cycle I
Observation of student and teacher activities in cycle I was conducted with the prepared observation sheets. Observation was conducted during the learning process in order to find out how far the composed plans had been implemented.
From the results of observation for meeting 1 cycle I, data for teacher activities showed a score of 69 with a success percentage of 86%. All the planned activities had been implemented well. However, the results of findings still showed some shortcomings. From the results of analysis of observation sheets, teacher activities showed the criteria of being satisfactory. The shortcomings are related to the conveying of learning objectives. The teacher only conveyed learning objectives verbally. The teacher should have conveyed learning objectives in writing on the board so that students can easily remember. Despite the shortcomings, in general, the learning process for meeting 1 had proceeded well.
The results of observation of student activities for meeting 1 cycle I showed a score of 67 with a success percentage of 84%. Based on the findings, it can be concluded that student activities have not been maximal. The shortcomings are related to orientation, target explanation, and reasoning. For orientation, students still have not performed at their best. Students did not fully grasp the material. These two shortcomings have the result of students lacking mastery of conjunctions, simple sentences, and compound sentences. The teacher should have given 6(2), December 2019 e-ISSN: 2549-8673, p-ISSN : 2302 -884X www.erudio.ub.ac.id intensive reinforcement of the materials on the linguistic aspects of biography texts, in particular mastery of conjunctions, simple sentences, and compound sentences. During the explanation of targets, there were still several students who did not note the learning objectives provided by the teacher. Some students appeared to talk to each other. In the stage of reasoning, the classroom condition was not yet conducive. This was because the teacher did not directly guide student activities in playing the monopoly game, and students tended to talk to each other.
For meeting 2 cycle I, the score of teacher activities resulted in a score of 68 with a success percentage of 85%. This means that all planned activities had been carried out well. However, the findings still indicate that there are certain aspects that need to be improved. These aspects cover the activities of asking, collecting information, explaining sentence structures, and concluding the lesson. As well, student activities resulted in a score of 66 with a success percentage of 82%. These results indicate that the students have participated well in learning. Even so, findings showed that there are still several shortcomings that need to be improved. Those shortcomings are the collection of information, reasoning activities by students (particularly when working on problems), and making conclusions. These shortcomings become the basis for reflection of activities in the next cycle. From the two meetings in cycle I, it can be generally concluded that the score for teacher activities is within the score of 68 with a success percentage of 85.5 %, and student activities are within the score of 67 with a success percentage of 83%.
Based on the learning process carried out in cycle I, the percentages of student understanding of linguistic aspects of biography texts, in particular finding and explaining kata conjunctions, simple sentences, and compound sentences can be calculated; these are shown below.  Based on Figure 2, it can be seen that in cycle I there were 4 students with very good scores, a percentage of 13%. 19 students obtained good scores with a percentage of 61%, 8 students had satisfactory scores with a percentage of 26%, and no students had poor scores. From these results, it can then be concluded that there are still aspects that have not been mastered by students. This is shown by the results of scores that are in the categories of satisfactory and poor. An aspect that had not been mastered by students in cycle I is understanding and finding compound sentences, which students have difficulty with. In addition, students still had difficulties in understanding sentence structures.
Based on this explanation, the overall average of student scores in understanding linguistic aspects of biography texts was 76.14. This means that there were 11 students who have not achieved the established target for minimum passing criteria (KKM), which is a score of 78, while 20 students had obtained scores greater than the KKM. As such, it can be concluded that the percentage of completeness of student study results in cycle I is 64.52% above KKM and 35.48% below KKM.

Results of Learning in Cycle II
To find out the how the of student and teacher activities progressed in cycle II, evaluation is needed through observation forms. The evaluation aspects for student and teacher in cycle II include: 1) the introduction, consisting of orientation, explanations, motivation, and target setting; 2) the primary activities, consisting of observing, asking questions, collecting information, reasoning, and communicating, and 3) the conclusion, consisting of reflection and follow-up. Below is the evaluation of the activities of students and teacher in cycle II.
The evaluation score for teacher activities in meeting 1 cycle II is 80 with a success percentage of 95%. This means that the learning activities conducted by the teacher is good enough and no more improvements are necessary because the student evaluation of activities are good and very good, and not one of the evaluation aspects were evaluated as satisfactory and poor. Thus, the lesson plan has been carried out well and systematically by the teacher. The improvement of teacher activity evaluations certainly has an effect on student activity evaluations. In meeting 1 cycle II, the total score for student activity evaluations is 78 with a success percentage of 97%. Based on the observation results of student activity evaluations in meeting 1 cycle II, it can be described that students had participated well in learning and did not experience difficulty in taking part in the learning process.
The total score of evaluation of teacher activities for meeting 2 cycle II is 80 with a success percentage of 100%. These results reflect that all activities were conducted well. As such, the learning process was smooth and without difficulties.
The score for student activity evaluations for meeting 2 cycle II is 79 with a success percentage of 99%. These results indicate that student response is good for the actions that they have been instructed to do by the teacher. As such, students had no difficulty in understanding the linguistic aspects of biography texts. From the two meetings in cycle II, in general it can be considered that the score for teacher activities is within the score of 79 with a success percentage of 96%, and the score for student activities is within the score of 79.9 with a success percentage of 99.5%.
After cycle II of the learning process for understanding the linguistic aspects of biography texts, score data was obtained in entirety. These scores were obtained from student learning results after working on the problems given by the teacher. The aspect of learning evaluation in cycle II is understanding the linguistic aspects of biography texts, particularly in identifying and explaining conjunctions (coordinate and subordinate), simple sentences, and compound sentences according to features, characteristics, and structure. The results of evaluation can be seen in the following table. The scores obtained by students can be seen in Figure 3.  Based on Figure 3, it can be seen that in cycle II, 27 students earned very good scores with a percentage of 87%. 4 students had good scores with a percentage of 13%, and not one student was found to have satisfactory or poor scores. Even so, findings still indicate that there are aspects that have not been mastered by students, but these aspects do not disrupt their learning. The aspect in question is understanding and explain sentence structures (SPOK). In relation to this, students still experience errors in identifying SPOK in a sentence.
Result of action in cycle II shows that 27 students obtained scores greater than the KKM (78), and only 4 students did not achieve the KKM. The class average score in lessons to understand linguistic aspects of biography texts in cycle II is 92.48. Thus, the percentage of completeness for cycle II is 90.32% of students with scores greater than KKM and 9.68% of students with scores less than the KKM.
Based on these results, it can be explained that learning to understand linguistic aspects of biography texts using a monopoly game can help with and improve student learning results. The learning process carried out through monopoly media enables students to understand the material more easily.
An important part of this research is the presence of a learning condition that is safe, comfortable, and fun. This condition was immediately created by the teacher. The safe and comfortable learning condition involves learning that has a setting with minimal threats and pressure. The fun learning condition involves learning that has a setting filled with friendship, togetherness, and freedom. Such a condition will lead to a conducive class environment, which further on can instill the growth of the learning interest of students. Such a condition demands the professional quality of a teacher. DePorter (1999:14) has stated that an environment full of happiness will also lead to happiness in learning. Similarly, Welberg andGreenberg (1997, in DePorter, 1999:19) in their research has stated that the social environment of a classroom is the primary psychological determinant that affects learning.
In line with this, Kaufeldt (2008:89) has stated that the best way of learning is with sufficient challenges in a learning environment with few threats. For this reason, this research attempts to 6(2), December 2019 e-ISSN: 2549-8673, p-ISSN : 2302 -884X www.erudio.ub.ac.id